Young Artists Project: Core Artist Faculty
At the heart of the Young Artists Project is its Core Artist Faculty. The Core Faculty are vital, contemporary artists, who guide and inspire young artists throughout the year. They also explore and create new work while in residence at Fort Worden.
Centrum will showcase the work of these exciting voices, both here in Port Townsend, and in the broader region. These artists will also serve as ambassadors for Centrum, and for the importance of artistic endeavor.
SAMANTHA RUND, theater artist
JEANNINE HALL GAILEY, poet
AMY JOHNSON, visual artist
ERWIN THOMAS, theater artist
DIEM CHAU, visual artist
AMBER WOLFE, theater artist
ZOE SCOFIELD choreographer
JUNIPER SHUEY video/installation art
SAMANTHA RUND, theater artist
“I am interested in the connection between life and art,” says theater artist Samantha Rund. “Life informs art, art informs life, and both feed off of each other. In this way I think everything is part of the acting process.”
Rund, who uses a number of techniques to prepare for a role, has performed and taught at theaters across the country, usually playing major female roles, including Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, Varya in Cherry Orchard, and Chick in Crimes of the Heart.
JEANNINE HALL GAILEY, poet
Jeannine Hall Gailey's first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book have appeared multiple times on NPR’s The Writers Almanac and Verse Daily. Two poems from Becoming the Villainess are featured in the 2007 The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin's Griffin). Her work has also appeared in The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and The Evansville Review. Her chapbook, Female Comic Book Superheroes, was published by Pudding House Press.
"In this splendidly entertaining debut, Jeannine Hall Gailey offers us a world both familiar and magical filled with fairytale and mythology characters that are our own bedfellows we wake up with Philomel and argue with Ophelia while half-listening to a Snow Queen, amidst Spy Girls, Amazons and Mongolian Cows. The wild and seductive energy in this collection never lets one put the book down. Her delivery is heart-breaking and refreshing, so the poems seduce us with the sadness, glory and entertainment of our very own days. —Ilya Kaminsky, author of the award-winning Dancing in Odessa
AMY JOHNSON, visual artist
Amy Johnson pursued her interest in art at the University of Colorado at Boulder and received her BFA in 2003 with concentrations in photography and ceramics. She received her MFA from the University of Washington with a body of work focused on female socialization and identity. Johnson has been a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT and is in the collections of the University of Montana Museum of Art and Culture and the Archie Bray Foundation. Johnson was the recipient of the Elmer Craig Award at NCECA in 2006.
"Amy Johnson makes her own paper, pulps it, dyes it and casts it. I like her "Mirror Mirror," a Japanese-style greeting card come to life and writ large across a wall: black trunks and black/red blooms, some piled up on the floor with fractured blackbirds riding upward diagonals. Johnson's strength is her ability to evoke a greeting card version of a fairy tale, blow it up across a wall and without losing the essential artifice, suggest a landscape in which it might be possible to take a stroll." --Regina Hackett, Seattle Post Intelligencer
ERWIN THOMAS, theater artist
Erwin E. A. Thomas is an actor, cultural artist and educator currently working between Seattle, WA and Brooklyn NY. Most recently, he played Ephraim in the New Federal Theater/ Caribbean American Rep’s production of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl.
Thomas wrote, performed and produced the one person show “Quiet Violence of Dreams” based on the prophet Nat Turner and his own experiences as a Black male in America. In June of 2007, Thomas was part of the Public Theater’s Suzanne Lori-Parks 365 play Festival. He originated the role of Satan #1 in the new play “The Surprise Witness, and apologia for Adam and Eve.” Thomas performed as a member of the Germany based Nomad International Theater Ensemble in a production of the original work “Homage a b.b.” (based on the life and works of Bertolt Brecht) in Stuttgart, Germany.
Future projects include a role in a historical narrative film in remembrance of the African Burial Grounds on Wall Street in NYC. The Bridge Project: an intergenerational workshop that will bring the Civil Rights Generation and the Hip-Hop Generation together in a live, multi-media performance.
He is a founding member of Urban Scribes Project, and has served on the Board for Youth Speaks, Seattle. As a cultural activist Erwin has designed and facilitated workshops around the issues of race, Hip-Hop, media literacy, drama, and poetry. Thomas served on the panel for the Seattle’s Central District Forum for Arts and Ideas American Heritage Series: “Patriot or Terrorist? Exploring the legacy of Nat Turner and John Brown.”
Learn more about Erwin...
AMBER WOLFE, theater artist
Amber Wolfe has performed in productions at Seattle Shakespeare Company (Richard III), Annex Theatre (Red Ink), Empty Space Theater ((L)imitaions of Life), San Diego Repertory (Celebration of the Lizard), and Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego (The World is Round); fronts the band Miss Mamie Lavona the Exotic Mulatta and her White Boy Band; dances with Ana Montes' Flamenco Danzarte. She also works as a teaching artist for Rainier Valley Youth Theatre.
"<symphony> is billed as theater, but only Amber Wolfe and Carl Cutler (both breathtaking to watch in vastly different ways) seem to understand how important their body language is in communicating the themes." --Paul Constant, The Stranger
ZOE SCOFIELD choreographer
JUNIPER SHUEY video/installation art
Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey create three-dimensional art that melds dance performance with video and photographic techniques.
Zoe Scofield studied ballet and choreography at Walnut Hill School of Arts and Boston Conservatory before joining Prometheus Dance and Bill James Atlas Dance Company. Since moving to Seattle her work has been shown at On the Boards, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Bumbershoot, MOVE!, Ten Tiny Dances, The Southern Theater, ODC Theater, and Velocity Theater. Scofield and Shuey were recently commissioned by the Frye Art Museum and Spectrum Dance Theater.
Juniper Shuey is a Seattle-based video installation and sculptural performance artist whose work has been featured in many exhibitions including solo exhibitions at the Howard House, Tacoma Art Museum’s Northwest Biennial (2004, 2006), Fashion is Art, Northwest Annual at Bellevue Art Museum, and La Mostra in Palazzo Pio, Rome.
"[Zoe and Juniper] have created a haunting piece whose powerful effects linger long after the curtain goes down." Alice Kaderlan, Seattle Post Intelligencer
